


Stories of the Second Self: Makeover

by John_Steiner



Series: Alter Idem [29]
Category: Urban Fantasy - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:27:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22519978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: At first glance, many people take Ellsa Laqouis as just a fly girl for Papa Delane Henry. Yet, when Papa Henry wants a problem solved permanently Ellsa is his strongest message. The choice to sponsor Ellsa into a vampire was both her promotion and an extension of Papa Henry's hold over Silverton, Cincinnati.
Series: Alter Idem [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813





	Stories of the Second Self: Makeover

After nearly three hours of on again, off again mutual drinking of blood ended. Ellsa Laqouis convulsed and her lungs spasmed. She could felt her heart pounding in desperation, but the new blood it pumped carried no oxygen. Instead, it delivered something else to every cell in her body.

To her side, Papa Delane Henry also fell and laid perfectly still. His eyes solid black eyes stared into nothing, and his mouth, bloodied as Ellsa's was slack and agape. Before and after, Papa Henry was dead.

Ellsa felt as if she were drowning, and her vision faded. Her gasps grew less frequent and weaker, and she felt her last heart beat turn more into a flutter of surrender. First, Ellsa's limbs grew cold, and then her body. Sounds faded, as if down hallways that stretched to eternity.

Yet, at the very moment Ellsa's last thoughts would have winked out, she felt awash in new mental activity. The air in her lungs felt sour and stale, but she didn't gulp in desperation to breathe. Her heart was still, but felt different. Every swallow made her stomach brush against the organ that remained in cardiac arrest.

In a jolt, her fingers opened from their grip on sheets Ellsa had clutched in her dying moments. Grabbing again, she tried to pull herself up into sitting position. She had been left on the bed where she and Papa Henry laid down together to trade blood. What little had spilled was already black and crusted, and Delane no longer lay in the bed.

Covering more of the sheet between her legs, and just as feted, was urine and fecal matter. It had seeped from her after her muscles went slack. The rank odor struck her with a slap of offense.

"Ohh!" Ellsa brought a hand up to her nose, realizing both lacked warmth.

"Yeah, there's that," came Papa Henry's voice from the bathroom. "Not something the movies think about when depicting the crossover."

"How long?" Ellsa formed her first words, after realizing she still needed lungs to inhale before speaking.

"Three days," Papa Henry answered as cheery as a receptionist in a Kevin Smith movie, "You died three days ago. I was out for a day and came to, which is normal. I wanted to be here when you woke."

Ellsa noticed something else about herself, looking down. "Is better muscle tone also normal?"

"And the slimming waist," Papa Henry entered the room, while folding his tie. "Not that you had much of a trouble spot there, but it was starting-- to be honest."

"How does that work?" Ellsa asked, and then realized who she was addressing, "If I may know, Papa Henry."

"Oh, that part's no secret," he replied, like a host of a PBS kids show. "See, what happens is your entrails shrivel up completely, as does body fat. Because lactic acid build up isn't a risk anymore, your muscles are free to peak out at maximum stimulation, and none of it needs to be used for body heat. And that means," Papa Henry moved his up-pointed finger from one side of his view to the other, "All that energy goes straight to kinetic, making you nine hundred percent stronger than you were before. That's why Papa Henry's recommendation is to buff up before being sponsored."

Ellsa registered something else about her sight. "Why's everything got a glow to it?"

"You mean you haven't noticed?" Papa Henry whimsically quizzed her.

To emphasize his point, Papa Henry walked over to the dimmer switch and dialed it up just a little. The fixture overhead came on, and added centralized illumination to the ambient light everything seemed to give off, even Ellsa's own body.

"The light was off, Papa Henry?" Ellsa wondered, and taking in the room and herself with actual new eyes. "But if I don't have body heat...."

"Everything has heat," Henry explained, as though he were The Science Guy. "We simply match the heat of our environment, which is the heat you see that others can't. You'll never know true darkness again."

"Thank you, Papa Henry," Ellsa offered in authentic gratitude.

"There is no need to thank me," he replied, and raised a finger again. "You earned this, and proved yourself capable of handling it. Less than one person in three I've sponsored successfully drinks all my blood with the exact timing I drink theirs. The rest die in the usual way. Also, because of your loyalty and invaluable skills, I grant you use of my first name, Delane. Names have power, Ellsa."

She dipped her head, still feeling obligation to her Sponsor. "May I also use your shower?"

"Yes you may," Delane permitted with a warm fatherly smile. "And don't worry about the bed. I'll send someone in to handle that."

Careful to slide up from the mess her body made, Ellsa slowly swung a leg around to plant a foot onto the floor. Getting up, she quickly trotted over to the bathroom, with Delane stepping away to give her room.

"One more thing," Delane said, patting the exquisite dresser on the opposite wall. "Your clothes will be waiting here when you're done."

Ellsa slid back a glass door of a shower that was six feet by six feet and stepped in. She hadn't bothered closing the bathroom door, which made her again look down at herself.

Never a prim woman before, Ellsa felt no sense of modesty for her naked, and much soiled body being visible. However, her nose demanded some dignity, and so she flipped up the handle for water.

Cold water rained down from several shower heads on both sides of the corner. Ellsa didn't recoil or shiver from the drop of temperature she felt, thought much enjoyed when it grew warm.

Running her hands down her raven black hair, Ellsa felt nothing unusual about the follicles, and wondered how hair growth worked now. Come to think of it, as water splashed over her mouth, she realized that warm liquid all over her face was heaven. Ellsa needn't even fret about her nasal passages being filled up so that she couldn't breathe through them.

Filling her mouth up with water, Ellsa forced it through her nose and giggled at the sensation. She experimented with filling her lungs up completely, and marveled at the sensation of the slow water balloon shifting that represented voluntary drowning.

After, she bent over and exhaled the water without panic, and laughed with a gurgle, as the last water splashed out at her feet. Then, Ellsa took seriously the need to be clean, and tried out the first of several body soaps Delane had on shelves built into the shower. One was for men, but he kept a wide variety of ladies' body washes.

Delane's reputation in the Chapter as treating women in equal terms, good or bad, as men clashed with the fact he liked having two or more beautiful ladies around him, almost as showpieces.

Yet, a woman like Ellsa found her place in his Chapter through skill and hard work none of Delane's fly girls exhibited. Delane had assigned work to her the way he would a man, and expected equally proficient results. Ellsa proved both versatile and discrete so much that she had become his most trusted enforcer.

She didn't work hard for hopes of one day asking Delane to Sponsor her into a vampire, but when he offered it Ellsa found herself unable to say no. Delane would benefit as much as she would.

The glare of shower heat turned blinding, and Ellsa squinted while finishing her washing down and rinsing off. Her infrared, UV, and improved visible light receptivity was the only sense heightened.

Ellsa had normal eyesight before, and so didn't know if being a vampire fixed bad vision, however, smell and hearing were no different. She had heard vampires claim they could smell human blood better, but from her experience so far, it wasn't anything superb, at least not with other bodily fluids competing.

Leaving the shower, Ellsa pulled off a freshly hung towel that was still warm from the drier, and toweled off. In the bedroom, she heard someone pulling the sheets and an underlying waterproof sheet off and folding them up.

"Miss Laqouis," came a man's deep liquid Haitian accented voice, "I have your clothes here ready for you. Also, Papa Henry has granted you a polarized face shield and daylight covering that suits your style."

Coming into the bedroom, Ellsa held the towel to her chest, through that hardly covered her body. The man held his head in such a way that she could tell he was refusing to glance at her either from respect or fear. After bundling up the sheets into a basket, he deliberately turned away from her to face the door and promptly left.

Ellsa slipped her panties back on, and then her black party dress with the red curving strip down the right side. It had been skin tight everywhere before, but now it was noticeably looser around the waist.

Prior to turning, Ellsa had worked out regularly at the gym, but also ate more calories for muscle building, as per Delane's suggestion. Yet, she was already twenty-nine when joining the Silverton Voodoo Chapter, and even a woman doing work as intensive as hits and security couldn't prevent the wrong kind of gain.

That was different now, Ellsa knew running her hands down her flat yet iron hard stomach and narrow but firm sides. She recalled Delane's body having the same perks of no longer needing an intestinal tract, and then Ellsa became aware that she was hungry.

However, Ellsa took one more trip into Delane's bathroom to see herself in the mirror. Her reflection appeared, but with the same oil black eyes Delane had. Her features were like when she was twenty-two, but with stronger facial muscles and a sunken look about her temples and cheeks.

Pulling back her lips revealed that her teeth were all changed into inward curved hooks of the same length they were before she turned. Even the cuspids of her molars and premolars were curved backwards and appeared razor sharp to the touch.

"I can't wait to use these babies," Ellsa cooed, and blew herself a kiss.


End file.
